Japanese director Katsuhito Ishii’s “The Taste of Tea” (2004) certainly qualifies as among the more surreal, amusing cinematic explorations of a rural Japanese family. Told entirely through six Harunos family members, all with kind hearts, the rather disjointed narrative follows their bizarre antics, each person so eccentric that it’s challenging to decide who wins the medal for the most peculiar response to their otherwise quiet household environment. Set in Motegi, Tochigi prefecture northeast of Tokyo, the countryside setting intensifies and yet nicely accommodates this assemblage of mindboggling vignettes.
Here’s the lineup. Speaking only gibberish, grandfather Akira Todoroki (Tatsuya Gashûin) spends his time practicing samurai poses and leaps, determined to get his arms and legs in exactly the correct angled position. Concerning this character, Ishii says, “The effect I was aiming for was cartoonish rather than realistic.” This contrasts with Mother Yoshiko (Satomi Tezuka) whom Ishii wanted “sweet and light.” Indeed, Yoshiko is, ignoring all housekeeping obligations in order to devote time to her animation project. Late in the film, the two minutes of her creation projected for the family is a psychedelic masterpiece. In what feels like a parallel universe, six-year-old Sachiko (Maya Banno) copes with the erratic, gigantic appearance of her own face, an unnerving intrusion into her everyday activities. They center around her repeated attempts to complete a backflip over a bar which seems necessary for her domineering image to leave her alone. Casting her, Ishii says, “The last thing I wanted was perky and exuberant. . . I asked her to play rather gloomily,” and Banno delivers.
For his part, naïve older brother Hajime (Takahiro Satô) obsesses over a teenage girl whom he races toward in several scenes, running all out on a dirt path until he’s completely breathless. Meantime, she whizzes by on a train, that train then emerging from his head. Eventually, he will play GO with her in the most satisfying moments. Not to be outdone, father Nobuo (Tomokazu Miura) works as a self-styled hypnotherapist who is regularly interrupted in his procedures by distracting telephone calls. His brother, Uncle Ayano (Tadanobu Asano), struggles as a music producer committed to getting sound just right, to the point of exasperating perfectionism. To describe them all as idiosyncratic does not do justice to just how inspired and unusual they all are, the combination beyond abnormal. As if all this fails to present a completely bewildering group, director Ishii interjects animation, a dance number, a buried mud man, and several other fantastic, imaginative flights of fancy. And yet there is a sweetness at the heart of this film that communicates a warmth absent from so much conventional fare.
Celebrated for his animation series “Hal & Bons” and the animation for Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill: Vol. 1,” Ishii proves he resists labeling and categorization in his stylistic choices as well as his content. Through long single takes with a stationary camera, wide shot compositions invite viewers to relax into this surprising, delightful playfulness. Wanting “the visual tone as even as possible, so as to not have any particular details stand out, feel forced or emphasized,” Ishii depicts an extravagant milieu that appeals, as seductive as a wonderful dream.
In Japanese with English subtitles, “The Taste of Tea”screens at Webster University’s Winifred Moore auditorium Tuesday, May 19, and Thursday, May 21, at 7:30 p.m. each of those evenings. For more information, you may visit the film series website at: Webster.edu/filmseries.